Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Is Agile Skub?

On a long wall at work, there's a glass board (probably 40 feet or so wide) on which our CIO will ask questions and anyone passing by can answer using dry erase markers. The question most recently posed is something to the effect of "What are you doing to be more Agile?".

I found it interesting that somebody wrote "Pro Skub" on one end of the board and "Anti Skub" at the other end. What is Skub, you ask? It's a reference to a Perry Bible Fellowship comic, penned by Nicholas Gurewitch.


This raises an interesting question for me: is Agile nothing more than a meaningless buzzword that arouses passion on the fringes that comes across as absurd to everyone else? To at least one person in my organization, it would seem the answer is "Yes!"

To me, this is an indicator of the "Trough of Disillusionment" on they Hype Curve. It reminded me of an article titled "The End of Agile: Death by Over-Simplification". To me, the points made by this article and others that it references indicate an over-emphasis on practices or principles in silos. In other words, teams will focus on one specific principle, practice, or approach under the banner of Agile and claim that it will solve all of their problems. Of course it doesn't, and when it doesn't it leads to disillusionment and cynicism.

It is so crucially important that we take a step back and look at the whole Agile Manifesto, with all of its Principles, along with complementary principles and approaches (such as Lean and Flow). Practices, approaches, and methodologies are all tools, and none of them sacred, in an attempt to align more with the Lean|Agile paradigm that will drive successful teams.

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